


Battle Hymns or Lullabies

by roseandheather



Category: Code Black (TV)
Genre: Accidental Pregnancy, Everyone Deserves A Second Chance, F/M, New Beginnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 03:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6356632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseandheather/pseuds/roseandheather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if it wasn't food poisoning?</p><p>When a bout of vomiting turns their world on its head, Ed and Leanne face an unexpected future. Fortunately, they also have Christa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle Hymns or Lullabies

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [But Don't Forget (Who's Takin' You Home)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6348517) by [roseandheather](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseandheather/pseuds/roseandheather). 



> A nagging voice in my head kept going, "Yes, but what if it _wasn't_ just food poisoning?"
> 
> This is my attempt to get the nagging voice to shut up.

Christa Lorenson knows the sound of vomiting, and she's well used to it. By now, hearing that particular sound in Angels' ER doesn't even rate.

She is _not_ used to hearing it coming from the staff bathroom, however.

"Everything all right?" she calls through the door.

"Come in," a hoarse voice croaks. "I'm embarrassed, but not indecent."

" _Leanne?_ " Christa shoves the door open without further ado, only to find a distinctly sheepish Leanne Rorish curled on the floor in front of the toilet. "Are you okay? What the hell happened??"

Leanne sighs. "I," she begins, then holds up a finger and bends over the toilet bowl to retch some more.

Christa, naturally, drops to her knees and holds Leanne's hair back from her face.

"Thanks," Leanne says wearily, wiping her mouth with a square of toilet paper. "Anyway, I started feeling queasy an hour or so ago. I thought it was just too much coffee on an empty stomach, but I've been in here for fifteen minutes already. That's not too much coffee."

"No, it isn't." On autopilot, Christa runs through her checks: cheeks are flushed but no sign of fever, pulse is on the high side of normal, respirations are quick and shallow, mucous membranes are slightly tacky but a normal color, and though her skin tents when pinched, it does smooth out eventually. "Well, you don't exactly look like you're at death's door, but you are dehydrated and could probably use some IV fluids. Any idea what's causing this?" Suddenly Christa pauses, her eyes widening. "Wait. There's not any chance you could be pregnant, is there?"

"Of course not, I'm - "

Leanne stops abruptly, her face going chalk white.

"Leanne?" asks Christa, more urgently now. "Is there?"

"There shouldn't be," Leanne whispers at last. "I haven't been regular for months, and I'm almost fifty - but Christa, I _could_ be."

"Okay." Clamping her fingers around her waistband - the better to hide them from Leanne - Christa drags in a deep breath and tries to _think._ "And if you were?"

Numbly, Leanne shakes her head. "I don't know how we'd manage," she admits hoarsely, "and I... I'm too scared to get my hopes up. I can't bear to. But if it's true..."

Leanne lets out a choked, harsh sob, then lifts luminous eyes to Christa's, and Christa tosses propriety to the winds. "I know," she whispers, because she _does_ \- for just a moment her mind, if not her hands, goes to the slight swell of her own belly - and the next thing she knows, Leanne Rorish is in her arms, crying helplessly into the sturdy cotton fabric on Christa's shoulder.

~*~

"I've been summoned?"

Ed Harbert's voice is as cheerful as his smile when he swings into Leanne's office, suit jacket abandoned at his own desk and sleeves rolled up his forearms. He's just about to start humming "Beautiful Day" - the damn song has been stuck in his mind for hours - when he catches sight of Leanne's face.

"Lea?" Hastily he crosses to where she's standing at the corner of her desk. "Lea, sweetheart, you look terrified. What _happened?_ "

He's not sure he correctly heard the next words out of her mouth. "Come again?" he asks with a frown.

Then she does look up at him, eyes wet, and there's a small, trembling, half-terrified smile on her face. She looks as though she's just jumped off a cliff, and doesn't know yet whether she'll fall or fly.

"I'm pregnant," she says, more clearly, and swallows hard.

And all the breath leaves his lungs, as though he's just been kicked in the chest by a particularly large horse.

Leanne, _pregnant?_

He bypasses the 'how' - he knows damn well how, and also that 'ridiculously slim chance' does not in any way equate to 'no chance at all' - and skips to the part where memory and wishing and _wanting_ slam him so hard he nearly doubles over.

For a moment that seems to last forever, all he can see is a series of images in his mind's eye - memories, half truths, buried dreams.

Leanne, a newborn cradled in her arms, mingled joy and pain in her eyes as she hands him back to the mother smiling on the gurney.

Leanne, embracing Christa wholeheartedly when the blonde announced her pregnancy, something wistful mingled with all the joy.

Leanne, crouched to offer a lollipop to an eight-year-old girl with a shiny, new, bright pink cast, a radiant smile on her face as she gently teases the girl.

Leanne, telling him drily "I don't think birth control is something we need to worry about," not quite able to hide the regret in her voice.

Leanne, stroking the framed photos of the children she lost, tears running down her face, leaning back against his chest as if for safety and for comfort.

Leanne after Christa's big announcement, squeezing his hand and murmuring, "You're all the second chance I need." And very distinctly _not_ saying, 'You're all the second chance I _want.'_

And then, finally, not a memory at all, but an image of Leanne in a hospital gown, smiling down at the baby in her arms - a baby with his eyes, and her dark hair.

He makes some sort of noise at that, and Leanne gently touches his arm. "Ed?" she asks uncertainly, and the fear in her voice drags him back to reality where nothing else could have.

"Oh, Lea," he says raggedly, and gently removes her glasses, then sets them aside. She looks at him, confused, and he does the only thing he can.

He takes her face in his hands, presses his forehead to hers, and lets the tears come.

"Oh, _Lea,_ " he says again, gently stroking her cheek with his thumb. "Lea, _Lea._ _"_

He can't stop the smile then, bursting out of him like sunshine after a storm; or the hysterical laugh that burbles up from deep in his chest until he's gasping, sobbing with it, crying and laughing at the same time.

 _God, she's tiny,_ he thinks absurdly, as he slides his hands down her sides and hauls her up and into his arms, hugging her so tightly he's afraid he might crack her ribs.

He can't bring himself to care. Not now.

"So, not angry?" hazards Leanne, from where her face is hidden in his shoulder. Her smile is real now, true and brilliant, no longer uncertain at all, and it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

"Not angry," he says emphatically, and presses a kiss to her temple. "I am a lot of things right now, Leanne - stunned, staggered, elated, in shock, so in love with you I can't even breathe - but I am very, very _definitely_ not angry."

"Good," she says, and he kisses the inevitable sassy remark right from the tip of her tongue.

They don't do much talking for the rest of the day. At least, not of the verbal variety.

~*~

_Six Months Later_

"How are you not on maternity leave yet?!" demands Christa crossly as she stalks into Leanne's office.

Leanne looks up from the work on her desk and peers at Christa over the rim of her glasses. "Hello, Christa," she says drily. "It's lovely to see you, too. How is Allie? And more pertinently, _where_ is she?"

"She's with her father, who is surrounded by a gaggle of nurses offering parenting advice, most of which we will ignore, and baby gifts, which we definitely won't. _Why are you still here?_ "

"Where else would she be?" asks Ed from the doorway, one eyebrow arched to his hairline. "Be impressed. She's only here nine hours a day now, and only five days a week."

"Only because you drag me out the door when I go a minute over that," grumbles Leanne, slouching in her chair and crossing her arms somewhat awkwardly over her heavily pregnant belly.

Christa offers Ed her most radiant smile - which is quite radiant indeed, after Allie's birth. "Well done," she says approvingly.

Ed sketches a half-sarcastic bow. "I live but to serve," he says, and offers Christa a lopsided grin in turn.

"You're both fired," says Leanne, without any heat.

"You can't actually fire me," points out Ed, in a tone which suggests it's not the first time he's had to make this point. "And while you can, technically, fire _her,_ I'll just hire her back."

Leanne grumbles under her breath. "Did you at least pick up that ice cream I like?"

"The maple sugar flavor?" asks Ed, who already knows the answer. "There's a gallon in the freezer."

Muttering a few more choice swear words under her breath, Leanne finally says, "Fine. You win. Today."

 _Well done,_ mouths Christa, when Leanne's gaze is safely averted.

Ed just winks in reply.

~*~

_One Month After That_

"What are you going to call her?"

Leanne - still sweaty, still panting, but somehow radiant all the same - turns the full force of her smile on Christa and nods in Ed's direction. "Go ahead," she says softly. "It was your idea."

Ed looks down at the tiny infant girl in his arms, then lifts his eyes to Christa's. "Aurora Joy," he says quietly, and his lips curve in a soft, misty smile. "For a new dawn."

Christa doesn't notice the tears rolling down her cheeks. All she can see are Leanne's shining eyes.

Ed leans down to kiss Leanne's still-damp hair, then settles the baby in her arms. Leanne looks down, glowing and peaceful, and her smile starts to wobble.

"Hello, darling," she whispers, and her voice cracks on a sob. "I'm your mama."

 


End file.
